READING BOOT CAMP is a FREE RTI reading program that uses best instructional practices with a proviso "ALL STUDENTS ARE GIFTED", the goal is to lift ALL students' ACADEMIC SKILLS using evidence-based Socratic methods, teach students as erudite beings, be flexible and have fun, set SMART goals, and differentiate through scaffolding and cooperative learning. RBC RTI has 13 years of proven results; the accelerated RTI program improves reading test scores by over a full grade level in 20 days.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

The Arizona Department of Education will raise AIMS reading and Writing cut scores in 2011-2012 to meet NCLB requirements. What does that mean for Arizona students? Student passing rates will crash in 2012, and schools will not meet NCLB/AYP requirements. The Arizona Department of Education reading cut scores were calibrated a year plus below grade level. The idea was that NCLB would eventually go away. The state legislator has sacrificed Arizona students in the name of low taxes and a business friendly environment. Students in Arizona schools passed the AIMS with ease making schools appear to be highly performing the past ten years. No need to fund education in Arizona we stiil looked good on paper. We are happy to be at the bottom or lowest funded school systems in the nation. Reading and Writing exams with such a low passing threshold are the norm for many states not just Arizona and many states are under pressure to meet the NCLB mandate. Low quartile students that make up 30-70% of Arizona Title I students will fail the Reading portion of the AIMS in 2012 with standards set at grade level.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Dear Teachers/Parents,
Reading Boot camp is what everyone should do! What we do is we sing songs like Across the Universe by The Beatles. Make flash cards from our Kung – Fu list (By the way, That’s a list of academic words), Sit with a buddy and study our National Reading Vocabulary and make kid-friendly sentences. We also practice our fluency with our Eclectic Speller. We do all of these to help us with reading, comphension, and fluency! Right now, We’re reading a chapter book called, Seer of Shadows. It’s about a boy named, Horace, who is a photographer and finds a frightful likeness: The image of the Von Macht’s dead daughter, Eleanora! The book is at a seven-fifty Lexile! 750! We’ve also read the Harry Potter, Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Because of Winn-Dixie, and The Story of Doctor Dolittle. It’s helps us with expression and fluency. Oh, I forgot to you the songs we sing. Across the Universe By The Beatles. What the World Needs Now by Jackie Shannon and Kung-Fu Fighting! All of these Songs we sing help us with speed and articulation. Something else I forgot. The fun things we do! Vocabulary Sparkle! Wait, you don’t know how to play Vocabulary Sparkle, do you? Then, I’ll tell you! All of us stand and try to guess the definition of the word Mr. Taylor gets from the Kung-Fu list. We also get rewards if we do Super Great! We Could get candy or play board games! Last Friday, Mr. Taylor made Mexican pizzas as a reward for the whole class. And when we’re practicing our fluency, We sit in cop cars. You know how cops talk to each other like one is facing north or east and the other south or west? Yup! That’s how we sit! Mr. Taylor calls it “buddy buzz” at times. The reason why We sit in cop cars is to listen to the reader better and see the text better. What about American Juku? Wait, What is it? It’s just a multiple – choice test. In Japan, It’s cram school. And by that I mean, Juku means cram. It’s helps us with reading comphension. We do it because it’s multiple – choice test prep. So you see why we do Reading Boot camp? If we do Reading Boot camp, Then the whole grade should too! No, The whole school. The whole district!
So please , PLEASE do it!!
Sincerely, Sabrina Age, 9

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Writing with kids as you read is a powerful tool to build literacy!
Journaling as you read is the most effective way of understanding a work of literature and strengthening understanding of the writing process at the same time. With journaling you integrate reading and writing, and you will find that you can relate to the story more completely, and experience every image, every conversation, every character, and every interesting adventure. Avoid hasty reading or skimming because it can prevent you from understanding the meaning of the book as a whole. Investigate everything fully; be prepared to learn and be inspired. Never skip a word you don’t know. Stop! Write it down! Seek the meaning! If you do skip the meaning, you are leaving a great treasure behind. Seek those characteristics that skilled writers observe in real life and integrate them into your journals, essays, letters and reports: perseverance, conflict, justice, injustice, challenge, courage, character, adversity, and apprehension. Engaging writing includes exciting precise vocabulary, captivating dialogue, well organized plot, varied complex sentences, and grammatically refined prose with fresh original ideas. When you discover the deeper meaning and relate it to the content, you'll be on your way to understanding and loving books. Using great works of literature to examine, and compare and contrast with your own writing, will build knowledge of how to write great passages and prose yourself.

Writing about reading makes struggling students more secure and comfortable to write with the support of the author’s vocabulary and paragraphs. Writing about reading makes students more independent, competent, motivated, and involved in all forms of academic text.

Writing about reading gives students ideas for their own texts. They reread and reflect upon their writing, which sparks fuller learning.

Writing about reading supports students to take charge of their learning and make connections between different areas of learning. Seeing teachers and parents write in their own reading journals and sharing their writing reinforces the vital importance of writing for life-long learning. It also
emphasizes the public nature of writing.

Journal coaching supports the students as they reach for more complexity in their reading and writing.

Journal coaching supports the students as they acquire the vocabulary and background knowledge to truly understand and enjoy the reading. Journal coaching supports the lowest quartile students as they learn challenging grade-level reading materials.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Corporate profits are at an all time high and the rich have become the super rich. The last ten years has seen a boon to billionaires. Why are we attacking teachers? Public schools spending is the villain of state deficits! Governors, both democrat and republican have sold-out, giving business and the wealthy tax breaks, grants, free land, cash incentives, all to stimulate the economy! What we have is low wages and very little to show. Two trillion in Wall Street bailouts, trillions in military spending for two wars are bankrupting our country. How is killing the middle class going to rescue our economy?
Countries we like to hold up as great exemplars of students performance have the highest percentile of national GDP dedicated to education! More back-room promises, corporate welfare, tax breaks for the super rich all stolen from children and future prosperity. The reason wealth is created in the United States is infrastructure. The G.I. Bill, Federal Highways System, Railroad /Trains, Telecommunication, Internet, Public Schools, State Universities, First Responders, Military, Power Grid, Canals, Ports, Airports and Law Enforcement are all crucial to creating wealth. The US ranks 46th in the world for percent of GDP spent on education. Every year we slide closer to third word status, this is going to speed up in the next two years.

Friday, March 25, 2011

The cost for most English reading intervention programs is about $100-$250 per students per year. This may seem to be a usury licence fee that does not include teaching maternal, books, training, software, or teaching cost . $100 per student sounds like a bargain to help a child to read, but that fee is just to use what amounts to best practice. $4,000-$20,000 per class or $25,000-$75,000 for an average site or building licence starts to ad up for a cash strapped district. The licence fee is just the start so price and overall cost can range greatly based of teacher training, teaching materials, software, basils, workbooks and the cost of the teachers time. Reading intervention programs are a billion dollar industry in the US and gaining traction with a society that is less prone to value children's literacy. Most published reading programs have shown little statistical growth as compared with a motivated highly trained teacher using best practice. The Chicago Public School district will spend around $12,900,000 to implement a published reading intervention program 2010-2011. Finding actual real cost or cost benefit analysis is virtually impossible because of pricing structure that the publishers use to hide the real totals from public scrutiny.

THE STRANGE TRUTH BEHIND THE HIGH COST OF TESTING

Excerpt from Reading Between the Lines by Stephen Metcalf "And, not surprising­ly, the Bush legislatio­n has ardent supporters in the testing and textbook publishing industries­. ...an executive for publishing giant NCS Pearson addressed a Waldorf ballroom filled with Wall Street analysts. According to Education Week, the executive displayed a quote from President-­elect Bush calling for state testing and school-by-­school report cards, and announced, "This almost reads like our business plan." The bill has allotted $387 million to get states up to speed; the National Associatio­n of State Boards of Education estimates that properly funding the testing mandate could cost anywhere from $2.7 billion to $7 billion. The bottom line? "This promises to be a bonanza for the testing companies,­" says Monte Neill of FairTest, a Boston-bas­ed nonprofit. "Fifteen states now test in all the grades Bush wants. All the rest are going to have to increase the amount of testing they do." Testing was already big business: According to Peter Sacks, author of Standardiz­ed Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It, between 1960 and 1989 sales of standardiz­ed tests to public schools more than doubled, while enrollment increased only 15 percent. Over the past five years alone, state testing expenditur­es have almost tripled, from $141 million to $390 million, according to Achieve Inc., a standards-­movement group formed by governors and CEOs. "

TESTING KIDS IS BIG $$$$$­$$$$ MONEY!

Food for thought, students that struggle with learning to reading lose hope and dignity. We forget that resiliency has an expiration date for most students. I refuse to let my students lose hope and dignity by teaching them ALL to read! Crash through the expectation of student failure. What is the cost of most published reading interventions?

The WWC publishes intervention reports that evaluate research on adolescent literacycurricula and instructional strategies for students in grades 4–12. These curricula andstrategies are intended to increase skills in alphabetics, reading fluency, comprehension,and general literacy achievement.All Interventions identified: Adolescent Literacy (Count = 15)

Evidence of mixed or no discernable effects for all improvement outcomes

September 2010

SuccessMaker®The SuccessMaker program is a set of computer-based courses used to supplement regular classroom reading instruction in grades K–8. Using adaptive lessons tail…

Evidence of positive or potentially positive effects for at least one improvement outcome

June 2009

The WWC publishes intervention reports that evaluate research on beginning reading curricula and instructional strategies for students in grades K–3. These curricula and strategies are intended to increase skills in alphabetics, reading fluency, comprehension, and general reading achievement.

The Dyslexic Reading Teacher Sean Taylor

Literacy for me was almost an unrealized unattainable dream! As a dyslexic learner I was unable to read, write, or decode words as a child, p,d,b and q were all the same letter. The written word was a collection of cuneiform squiggles that swam around on the page. I was identified dyslexic at age 9 and later dysgraphic. I spent the next 6 years in special education programs (limbō) trying to learn to read and write. The special education programs never acknowledged my creative capabilities, coping skills and shame and humiliation of being illiterate, they focused on "curing" my learning disabilities with under-trained teachers! Many classroom teachers assumed I would never read or write due to the severity of my dyslexia and this made me feel worthless. I eventually learned to read all words by sight the same method as learning Chinese. I am a dyslexic reading teacher that has built a reputation for finding innovative ways to teach reading and critical thinking to all students! ALL children are gifted and can learn to read! Sean Taylor M.Ed.

Contact us @ seansart@hotmail.com

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95% Passing on EOG/EOC Reading Test in 20 Days!

READING BOOT CAMP is a FREE researched based RTI intervention program that uses best instructional practices with a qualification, teach to the very TOP, expose every student to grade level and above ELA concepts, lift all students using Socratic learning strategies, teach and treat all students as GIFTED, be flexible and have fun, set rigorous SMART goals, and differentiate through scaffolding and cooperative learning. This is a philosophy that many disagree with and believe it is not pedagogically sound, usually by teachers that try to ability group and differentiate for 2-7 grade levels. RBC has 13 years of proven results, the RTI reading intervention improves reading test scores by one full grade level in 20 days. Reading Boot Camp is used in hundreds of classrooms and a handful of schools as a proven school-wide and classroom turnaround program.

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